


Five Things River Tam Knows About Malcolm Reynolds, Even Though He Hasn’t Told Her (Yet)

by DesireeArmfeldt



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Gift Fic, POV Female Character, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Serenity (2005), Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-12 05:41:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7087483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River reflects on her relationship with Mal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things River Tam Knows About Malcolm Reynolds, Even Though He Hasn’t Told Her (Yet)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mm8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm8/gifts).



**1.**

The first time she met Malcom Reynolds, she called him a bad man.

She doesn’t actually remember this herself; she doesn’t remember much about those first daysweekssecondsages on Serenity, mostly just a blur of cold and colors and noise and toomuchdata and new faces and Simon, _Simon says we’re safe, Simon says home base, olly-olly-out-are-in-free, Simon says. . ._ By the time the inside of her head settled down and she could tell outside from inside with any reliability at all, she’d learned seven new people and a homeship in piecesparts, but the learning was gone and only the knowledge remained.

She probably only said it to intimidate him, a cornered creature showing her teeth. Or maybe she was joking. (The surgeons who sliced up her brain never managed to cut away her sense of humor.) She can’t imagine that she ever meant it for truth, or that there was ever a time when she didn’t sense the orangewarm hardbright core of him all shrouded in smoke and screams, fenced in behind the loudangrywords and the bigfumblingclown, with a big Do Not Enter sign tacked over it all, waiting for Someone to burrow her way under the fence.

It doesn’t matter what she thought then, when they were strangers, when she could barely think at all. Mal wouldn’t hold a thing like that against her.

The trouble isn’t so much that he remembers her saying it. The trouble is, he believes it’s true.

Mal’s friends know better than to take him seriously when he blusters and threatens and plays the ice-cold mercenary—and often his enemies don’t buy the act, either. Friend and foe, they understand: the Black is cold and unforgiving and humans often worse, so you have to be fierce or risk being eaten. You armor over your soft bits and only let them show when you’re homesafe, and sometimes people get stuck in their armor and forget how to take it off.

What they mostly miss, though, is that Mal wears his meanswagger heartofsteel armor to keep people from seeing the black soul he’s sure he’s carrying.

Sometimes, when he looks at River, the thought of what she must know about him chills him to his bones.

 

**2.**

Technically, she doesn’t need Mal to fly Serenity. Technically, River is a better pilot than he is, and Serenity doesn’t talk to him like she talks to River. He doesn’t understand her with his mind and body like Kaylee does, like Wash did.

But Serenity loves Mal like she loves nobody else.

Probably because he loved her first, and because he needs her most. He picked her out of a trash heap and gave her the stars and a crew and his beating heart, and if she died, he would die too, even if his body kept walking and breathing.

Mal picked River up when she was a brokenbabydoll, a mess of uncompilable code, a ticking time-bomb. He did try to put her down, more than once, loud and blueblackbruiseangry, but he always came back, planted his broad back and dirty boots and square chin between her and Trouble. Made her his to fight for; saw the misery crammed in her head and took her hand unflinching and made it _theirs_ to die for. Made her crew; started treating her not just as Simon’slittlesister brokenbabydoll weaponinhishand, but herownpersonself. He put his crew under her protection, put his ship into her hands.

There aren’t enough seconds before the heat-death of the universe to speak a commensurate volume of _thank you._ Anyway, Mal mostly just gets confused when people thank him, because he has trouble thinking and feeling at the same time.

So instead, she gives him the best thing she has to give him, namely, his own ship.

When they fly her together, River can feel Mal’s intentions without having to consciously think about it, the way two dancers communicate directly with their bodies. Mostly, she lets him lead, because she is a mature individual who doesn’t need to rub his nose in her superior ability—but when there’s an emergency, he hands over control to her automatically.

More and more, though, they dance together with nobody leading. They’ve learned each other well enough for that, and Serenity is used to pairwise pilots now, so much so that when River takes the helm alone—if Mal is asleep or planetside or occupied—Serenity balks, confusedworriedoffcenter, until River reassures her. And even though Serenity will fly for her alone, it’s never quite as. . .there’s always something. . .it’s just better when it’s the three of them.

Mal feels the same. He never says so, but he doesn’t-say it very loudly.

He doesn’t slip inside Serenity as deeply as River does, but he’s learning. Usually, he’s a constant grumble of gears, spinning half-digested thoughts and worries and moods, a solid iron anchor, stuck firmly in the muck of the world. Honestly, that’s probably a good thing. By herself, River might fly away among the stars, dissolve into gas, dissipate and never pull herself back together. Mal has enough gravitational force to hold together a solar system. Or seven souls cradled within the steel ribs of a ship.

But every once in a while she can feel him stop thinking and just _be_ —and for a glimmer, three become one and there is only flight, and the hum of the Black.

 

**3.**

Mal’s body is broad and square and heavy, the whole and each of its parts. One of his hands is as big as River’s whole face; with both of them, he can span her waist. He can carry her in his arms at a run, or fall asleep with her stretched out on top of him, his breathing unlabored.

Aesthetically speaking, River usually favors grace above brute strength. But Mal is no brute. His size and strength are natural to him, enhanced by training and use, and he inhabits his body with complete confidence.

It’s enough to steal her breath away, the ease with which he throws a punch or vaults a fence, loads a gun or gentles a horse. Intention translated seamlessly into motion; potential energy converted to kinetic, applied as work to produce force-times-displacement, to move mountains or pet kittens. He’s powerful, in both the metaphoric and literal senses, and he knows it. Batteredbloody or bareassnaked, he carries on just the same as always, giving orders to his crew, salvaging order out of chaos, doing what needs to be done.

He is what he is, entirely, which so few people are.

But dress him up in formal clothes, put him at an upper-crust banquet, and suddenly he’s awkward and clumsy, a bulldog in a shop full of fine porcelain. All his rough-hewn pride transmuted into shame.

Wrong, _wrong_ , unbearable. _They_ have the excuse of being a pack of rutting idiots without the wit to button their own boots, but _he’s_ smarter than that. A rose is beautiful, and so is a waterfall, and so is a horse, and so is a spaceship engine, and so is an explosion. Only a fool would try to dress up any of the above in Companion’s robes and invite them to a tea ceremony.

She hates that they can make him make a fool of himself.

Courtship makes Mal awkward, too, for related-but-distinct reasons. Fortunately, she already knew that about him long before he went all awkward with _her,_ so at least his transformation didn’t come as a total surprise. What _did_ surprise her was that once they’d gotten _through_ the mixed signals and fumbled words and hot, confusing feelings and eventual negotiations to the actual sex part, he suddenly went all awkward _again._

She’d been counting on his experience and physical confidence to make the lovemaking easy. And at first, it was. His big hands had been capable enough at getting them both out of their clothing. (She’d shivered at the heat of those hands as they eased her dress over her head, and shivered again at the cool air caressing her bared skin; funny, how opposite stimuli can provoke a body to identical responses).

Once they were naked, though, he turned clumsy, tentative, nervous. That was contrary to her best predictive model for his behavior, and in trying to adapt to the new data on the fly, it’s possible that her initial response may have been. . .less than ideally constructive. Which may have propagated a positive feedback loop of negative behaviors, awkwardness inducing awkwardness in a downward spiral until she was huddledarmscrossed and he was jittering at the far edge of the bunk, wincingworried painfulpinkfaced.

“Listen,” he stammered, palms raised _._ “We don’t—I mean, it’s all right if you don’t want—we can take it slow—or if you’ve changed your mind, that’s—”

“You’re the one who doesn’t want to,” she muttered.

“What do you—? Of course I _want. . .”_ He touched her elbow with all five fingers, until she met his eyes. “You thought _I’d_ changed my mind?”

She nodded, feeling foolish for letting an untested hypothesis drive her to irrational behavior.

“Don’t you ever think that. And don’t you ever worry that your body ain’t sufficiently. . .” He shook his head. “Anything. You’re—you’re right lovely and I—not that that’s the _only_ —but I surely want—that is, if’n you still—”

“I’m not the one who _stopped!”_

“Weren’t my intention to stop, I just—fact is, you’re—and I’m—and I don’t want. . .I’m afraid I’ll hurt you. You’re so. . .little.”

“I’m the same size I’ve always been,” she pointed out, because sometimes people have a strange need for the obvious to be stated.

“And you ain’t no dainty china doll, I _know_ that, it’s just. . .” He spread his hands helplessly. Big, uncouth, nosecracking, gunslinging hands. For a coldclenchingstomach second, her head was full of painimpactnecksnapping—but she shook her head and popped it like a soap bubble. _Ridiculous. You both know better than that._

But there’s a difference between knowing and believing.

So she took one of his hands, cradled it in both of hers like a napping eyesnotopenyet kitten, and looked up to find him watching. Waiting. She hissed in a breath, then, blinking her stinging eyes clear, because she hadn’t expected it to be like flying, that he would _let_ it be, just like that.

She raised his hand to her mouth and kissed the point where palm became wrist. Mal made a soft noise like pain only the opposite, and deep inside her, something silently cried out in reply. She tucked his hand in the small of his back, then kissed the other one too, for symmetry, before bringing it to rest behind him.

His expression went funny, like he’d just eaten a mouthful of local cuisine and couldn’t decide whether to spit it out or ask for more, and the tint of his cheeks approached the scarlet of the shirt he’d taken off earlier. And she honestly wasn’t trying to invade his privacy, but in her head like a shout was a briefbrightflash of _rope_. Which wasn’t what she’d meant at all, and she’s fairly certain she blushed, herself. But even though the rope-thought prickled with shockwaryembarrasedtense—not desirous at all—he held her eyes and held his ground.

Up on her knees, she kissed his mouth until he kissed her back, first softly, then deeply. . .generously. . .inviting her to make herself at home. Her lips were tingling when she eased back, excitement coursing through her like blood. With her index finger, she traced his damp, parted lips, and felt his breath, warmquickpuff on the back of her hand.

“You can’t crush me with that,” she told him.

“Well, now. . .” He cleared his throat. “There's some as hold the opinion I got a big mouth. . .”

Grinning, she spread her arms wide and leaned back until his pillow caught her. She floated there as he bent over her and applied his widewarmwelcoming mouth to every inch of her thrummingyearning skin, first kissing, then licking, then—as she squirmed and breathed and whimpered—daring to bring his teeth into play, brushing, nibbling, biting ohsosoftly at her hip, her navel. Her hands were busy on his backsideschest as his tongue sparked sweetelectricfire from her nipples to her core. . .she clutched his too-short hair as he lapped and tickled and teased her into an arching frenzy of needyesnowsupernovawhiteout—

(Her thoughts probably only stopped for a second. That’s still a second longer than any drug that doesn’t knock her completely unconscious. Her brain doesn’t _do_ silence.)

When she opened her eyes, Mal was smiling at her, smug and awestruck and also impatient with lust, but entirely his easyownself again.

He’s used to her little body by now; he knows how hard to grasp her, how deeply to breach her, how much weight she can bear. They’ve established a repertoire: lying face-to-face, kissing while they work each other with their hands. . .River riding Mal, his burly arms supporting her in a lascivious _pas-de-deux_. . .Mal on his knees between her dangling legs, lickingteasingstroking as she braces her hands on the wall behind her, the bunk too narrow to fall back on. . .River stretched out on top of him, knees straddling his ribs (not so different from riding a horse) as she sucks him down and he gasps and groans and tries not to buck. . .River sitting in his lap, both of them naked, Mal fondling her breasts as his hard-on nudges at her thigh and she pretends not to notice. . .

And so on, and so forth, foreverandeveramen.

Although they’re unequal along most dimensions, they love each other as equals, relying on each other’s strengths, compensating for each other’s weaknesses, and taking care of each other.

But sometimes, after they’ve made love, when she curls up in the crook of his arm with her head on his chest, or when he gets up and pulls the blanket back up over her as she drowses, all he can see is how fragile she looks.

 

**4.**

Mal has his faults, of course, but the one truly disappointing thing about him is his total lack of ability to carry a tune. Put him and Jayne together, get them the right degree of drunk, and it’s like a shipping crate full of cats in heat.

River might have mentioned her opinion on this point once or twice, before she learned where his soft spots are. She feels bad about that, but on the other hand, it’s really not a bearable sound.

Fortunately (and likely not by accident), he doesn’t often get the urge to sing. He only does it around her if his intention is to goad her into shrieks and flyingpillows and handsovermouth tustlingbodiesrubbingtogether and all the consequences that logically ensue.

Except. There was that one time. When her brain was on fire and the old smokeandscreams rose up from the flames, and time shattered into razor-edged confetti and all her words turned to soup and spilled out from her ears ‘till all she had left was _No._ Brainfragments floating untethered to her limpandthrashing meatbody, snatching in the maelstrom for something to coalesce around, and finding. . .Simon’s voice, alwaysforever centerofgravity. . .bloodyfingernailclutchingholding. . . _held_. . .cradledanchored in a hammock woven out of chestdeep tunelessdroninglullabye. . .reliable heartbeat thrumming through her skin, reminding her own skitteringjittering organ of its proper rhythm. . .Until, after some unmeasured quantity of nanoseconds, she awoke in her body, resting on Mal’s chest with his arms around her like a safety harness.

Objectively, she can’t be certain of the reality of anything she perceived during her Episode. But she knows what she knows.

 

**5.**

One day, maybe soon, he’s going to ask her to marry him, and the repercussions will be unnecessarily messy, and he won’t see any of it coming.

It’s hard to prepare, because she can’t predict with any certainty what form his madness will take.

Will he snarlsnap and pick fights, refusing to make compromises she’s never asked for and doesn't want, doing his best to drive her away?

Will he try to mold himself into a painfully inadequate simulacrum of the well-groomed, well-mannered, well-moneyed suitor her parents always counted on (even though he’ll never meet her parents and under no circumstances was she was never going to marry a trained monkey to please them)?

Will he go to the other extreme, flaunting the sweat and grime of a hard day’s work, putting his boots on the table and daring her to comment, getting drunk and flirting with strangers and making crude jokes to prove how untamable he is?

Will he turn stickysweet, showering her with flowers and handling her like a porcelain teacup and leaving her behind when he’s leading a team into danger?

She’s not sure she knows how to handle any of the above, or whatever surprise he may spring on her instead. Delicate negotiations have never been her specialty. She’s far better at sticking the knife into just the right spot than at tact. In her defense, that’s a trait for which her entire family lacks the gene.

Simon will fuss, even though he’s made his peace with RiverandMal and with the idea of his little sister as a woman grown and capable of S-E-X. He'll fuss because change always scares him, and River changing scares him exponentially more than anything else. So then Mal will yell at him, and possibly, if everyone’s lucky, this will only devolve into a minor pissing contest and not to Mal threatening to throw Simon off the ship and Simon believing him despite all precedent.

Jayne will likely throw fuel on the fire, whatever form it takes, while Zoe and Kaylee try to keep the Captain from doing too much damage during his temporary insanity, and Serenity will run offbalanceoutoftune.

All of which could most likely be avoided if Mal simply refrained from proposing.

It isn’t as though a proposal will convey any new information to anyone who matters. She knows he loves her; the whole crew knows; it’s obvious. He proclaims it with every smile and tease and touch; with the way he steps between her and threat, and the way he doesn’t try to stop her from taking the same risks as everyone else when there’s a job to be done; with the way he trusts her word, and the way he tries to understand when her words won’t come out straight. He puts his body at her mercy and at her service, and he falls asleep in her presence. A preacher’s blessing and a couple of strips of metal won’t make them any more forever.

She doesn’t need formal words from him, but she does understand that the act of _declaration,_ itself, is significant: a description that changes that which is described, brings definition to uncertainty. To declare himself to her, to speak a promise in front of their heart-kin and the God he sometimes wishes he still believed in: this is a gift he wants to give to her, and to himself. It’s also a narrow channel through a raging sea that he has to cross in order to get to where he wants to be with her.

Bravery is doing the terrifying when it needs to be done. It doesn’t necessarily mean doing it quickly, or without concomitant foolish behavior.

Patience is the gift River is saving up to give Mal when he needs it most. She knows a thing or two, by now, about weathering storms, especially the self-inflicted variety.

Love is where they are, and where they are going, and why.

 


End file.
